Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Branch, AR

Branch is a city in southern Franklin County that was founded around the beginning of the twentieth century as coal mining developed in the area.

Three men — William Bradbury, Richard Turner, and John Branch — founded the community where the railroad reached the coal fields; they wanted to name it Turner, but that name was already claimed by a Phillips County post office, so they chose Branch instead.

Branch was incorporated on July 3, 1909, and the Fort Smith, Subiaco, and Eastern Railway kept its headquarters in the town, building a branch line to the Grand Prairie strip mine in 1919.

Some historians claim as many as 900 people lived in Branch during the peak mining years, though no census ever counted more than 390 residents in the city.

The 2020 census counted 296 people in Branch, down from 367 in 2010, and the 2000 census had recorded 357 people in 141 households.

Branch sits at the junctions of Arkansas Highways 22 and 41 in southwestern Franklin County, about 28 miles east of Fort Smith.

After the railroad ran its last train in 1949 and the mines faded, Branch reinvented itself as an educational hub for the region.

The County Line School District is headquartered in Branch; its high school was built in 1951 on the Franklin–Logan county line — the source of the district's name — after the Branch, Cecil, and Ratcliff schools consolidated.

The County Line district enrolls roughly 450 students from kindergarten through high school, and the West Arkansas Education Service Cooperative also has its offices in Branch, making education the city's largest employer.

John Branch, one of the town's founders, had earlier built cotton and grist mills in the area before the railroad and coal mines arrived.